The School District is adopting an electronic student registration system officials say will save parents and school employees significant time when it comes to filling out and managing enrollment paperwork.

Charles Lee, assistant superintendent for general administration, explained the system at Tuesday’s School Board meeting. The board voted unanimously to accept a contract with SRC Solutions, a Pennsylvania-based firm, to implement the system.

The contract for $116,050 is good through June 2020. That includes the license fee for the system and staff training.

A district committee examined the firm’s Registration Gateway product and determined it would provide a more convenient way to enroll students, Lee said.

He said he talked to some other school districts in Arkansas, including Fort Smith, using the system. They are all happy with it, Lee said.

Parents will be able to register their children online any time of day. They may also upload any documents schools need, such as vaccination records and verification of address forms. Schools, in turn, may either approve the registration or request additional information from parents.

School registrars will be saved from organizing mounds of paperwork. That will reduce costs on both paper and labor, according to district officials.

If we truly want educational technology to take root in schools and finally live up to the promise we've been expecting for more than a decade, schools need to develop a cadre of well-trained tech instructional coaches.

A massive international analysis finds more screen time is associated with a lower sense of well-being among teenagers, but the effects are too small to require policy changes, according to a study in the journal Nature Human Behavior.